AUGUSTA, Ga. — In the loading dock of Bell Auditorium, a recently renovated event venue downtown, National Guard members from Marietta, 170 miles away, were loading cases of bottled water onto trailers as temperatures hit the mid-80s. They were destined for distribution sites in the city’s neighborhoods.

Volunteers from the city’s churches were putting plastic bags full of household cleaning supplies and nonperishable food onto the trucks and vans as well. A convoy of semitrucks from a Missouri nonprofit group had arrived earlier with some of the supplies. Local charities also donated.

“If you’re in Augusta, you need something,” said Phil Stanley, co-pastor of a local church who was helping to coordinate the effort. “You either need water or food or a way to get out of your driveway.”

Daily life for many in this city, best known by outsiders for the meticulously manicured and azalea-thronged Augusta National golf course and the adjacent 125-year-old Augusta Country Club, has been reduced to a struggle for the basics: food, water, electricity and, for some, shelter. Some are benefiting from the platoons of rescue workers handing out donated supplies. Neighbors are finding creative ways to help each other. One resident recounted that her sister’s neighbor traded pool water to flush toilets and borrowed a ladder in exchange for giving her sister bottled water.

Some wealthy residents were able to evacuate to their beach homes in Hilton Head and other parts of coastal Georgia or North Carolina. That has left others in the city, which has just over 200,000 residents and a poverty rate that exceeds the national average, to fend as best they can.

Advertisement

Law enforcement started going door-to-door as early as Friday, the day Helene hit Augusta, to rescue people in dire medical straits. But many spared injury and not needing medical assistance are still without almost everything.

At Bell Auditorium, the seats have been removed to make way for cots, and the Red Cross is setting up a shelter for people Helene left homeless, said Lt. Stephanie Allen of the Augusta Fire Department, who was overseeing logistics.

“It’s devastating here but the community is coming together,” Allen said. “Our community is struggling, we have needs and this is going to be a process.”

Helene tore through the city and the surrounding area early Friday with winds of 82 mph and gusts estimated at 100 mph.

The storm toppled trees, which snapped utility lines, damaged homes and businesses and trapped some inside their homes or subdivisions. Electricity is slowly being restored, but cellular coverage remains spotty and WiFi service rare, diminishing residents’ ability to find out how to get help. And the conditions add to the chaos: Residents in Augusta and its across-the-river sister, North Augusta, S.C., are under an advisory to boil water before using it because of damage to the water system infrastructure. But without electricity or gas, there is no way to boil water.

Locals said Helene was the worst natural disaster to strike the city in more than 100 years. That — and the fast-moving power of the storm — may have contributed to a lack of preparedness that has made recovery more difficult.

“We’ve never had anything like this,” said Michael Stevenson, 38, a history teacher at Immaculate Conception school, which serves students with special needs from pre-K to age 25.

Advertisement

Stevenson said he was awakened Friday morning at 2 a.m. when his CPAP breathing machine stopped working. He heard the wind howling and glass breaking. On Saturday, he was able to climb over fallen trees and get a cell signal. A text from his principal said that the school had power and air-conditioning and that staff, their pets and families were welcome to sleep there.

Stevenson and his parents, who share a house, headed to the school in downtown Augusta, a few blocks from Bell Auditorium. His parents returned to their house after the first night. Stevenson has remained at the school, along with about a dozen of his colleagues.

“I was excited to have a place that had air-conditioning, lights and water,” he said.

The principal invited those sleeping over to eat food from the school cafeteria — pizza and hamburgers the first night. Someone made a liquor store run, Stevenson said.

Advertisement

That first night, he put two armchairs together in a hallway for a bed. The next night he tried sleeping on a couch in his classroom. Then he tried out a twin air mattress he bought at Sam’s Club in Columbia, S.C., while buying groceries there.

At 6-foot-3, he found none of the sleeping arrangements comfortable, particularly when he discovered that a fellow teacher was a serious snorer. Stevenson said he hoped to find an affordable hotel room in Columbia, more than 70 miles away, “just me and Jesus.”

Other displaced residents included students at Augusta University as the dormitories and the rest of the school were closed. Its main campus and athletics complex are without power and water, according to Milledge Austin, a spokesman.

Only 1,000 of 10,000 students normally live on campus. On Sunday, about 65 students who did not evacuate dormitories were relocated via motorbus to Gordon State, he said. The two-year college is more than 150 miles away in west-central Georgia.

Advertisement

On Wednesday, traffic lights in downtown Augusta were starting to work, lines to purchase gas were shrinking and power was being slowly restored. But blocks from Augusta National golf course, the residential roads remained an obstacle course of downed power lines and trees. Utility trucks lined the streets bordering the Augusta Country Club.

In that neighborhood, Grant Hix, 29, and his wife, Megan, 30, like so many residents, had no power. Grant hasn’t been able to use his CPAP and the laundry is piling up. As their two young children played with stuffed animals on their front lawn, Megan said the couple has had to explain to them “about 50 times” why the TV and internet aren’t working and that “we’ve got to play with what we’ve got.”

At night, the temperature inside their brick home reaches 81 degrees. “My only regret is we don’t own a battery-operated fan,” Megan said.

The couple is making coffee by attaching their coffee maker to the power outlet in the truck bed of Grant’s Toyota Tacoma. Megan, a postpartum nurse, said her employer offered 10 gallons of gas to people willing to work shifts. She has gone in twice since the storm.

The family moved into their new home only a week ago. Do they know their neighbors? “We do now,” Megan said.

Advertisement

Across the Savannah River in the city of North Augusta, Amanda and Hunter Alexander and their son, Price, 2½, also had no hot water and no way to boil any. They had no internet, spotty cell service — best before 8 a.m. — and found food almost impossible to buy locally. Amanda’s sister, who lives in Athens, has driven the 100 miles to deliver canned and dried food and cases of water. Hunter’s sister’s boyfriend is driving to Columbia nearly daily to buy fresh fruit and other necessities.

“Our local Kroger is wiped,” said Amanda, 34.

The Alexanders also are coping with the cascade of trees now lying all over the property of the three-bedroom suburban house they bought just two months ago. It’s been a rude introduction to homeownership.

The house itself appears to have sustained a little damage, and an oak tree that was leaning on the house has been removed. And they are lucky in another way: The house they had rented earlier in Augusta was demolished by the wind.

Amanda said she has been texting her sister, who evacuated to Jacksonville, Fla., to check up on the various tree removal companies that have arrived from all over and have come knocking.

“People from Kansas quoted me $12,000,” she said. “They’re coming in, trying to get what they can. You have to be careful.”

Advertisement

She found a company two hours away; it would charge $5,000 to cut up the fallen trees. The air in their neighborhood smells of pine from all the fresh broken wood.

At Bell Auditorium, Stanley, the pastor, took a pause from his duties in the sweltering heat.

“I was born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, and I love my city,” he said, taking a sip of an energy drink inside the air-conditioned auditorium.

“I see God in the way things have gotten so much better in the past 24 hours,” he said. “Yeah, we need a lot more time before it comes together. But it is coming back together.”